Funding stalls efforts for valley fever vaccine

Just eight years ago, a vaccine to stop valley fever seemed within reach.

Yesenia Amaro and Tracy Wood

Just eight years ago, a vaccine to stop valley fever seemed within reach.

Ambitious scientists at five universities had brought in millions of dollars since 1997 from private donations and government funding to develop a way to beat the fungus before it ever had a chance to lodge in a person's lungs and wreak havoc on his or her organs.

"A vaccine is at hand," Dr. Richard Hector, the director of the umbrella organization, the Valley Fever Vaccine Project of the Americas, told an excited group of scientists at California State University, Bakersfield, in 2004.

But today, early animal trials of experimental vaccines have ground to a halt. Research funds have dried up. And the once-thriving academic effort has slowed.

Private industry interest is critical to bringing a vaccine to doctors' offices and clinics. That has been the pattern for all modern vaccines, including, most recently, the successful development of a vaccine to prevent the virus that causes cervical cancer. But there has been no interest by big pharmaceutical companies in investing in valley fever.

"Certainly, we think that more attention is needed on finding new effective treatments as well as preventive measures, like a vaccine," said Dr. Benjamin Park, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's chief expert in fungal diseases, adding that progress has been harmed by "neglect" and underinvestment.

The disease is tricky. The fungus that causes it infects a person for life and can never be removed from the body. But if a person successfully fights off the disease, he is immune to future infections. That's why people who grew up in areas where the fungus is prevalent often avoid serious illness while people who visit the area or move there are hit harder.

When one vaccine was evaluated in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and proved effective in mice and monkeys, hundreds of people signed up for human clinical trials.

But patients complained of very sore arms and swelling at the injection sites even at low doses. The shot was so painful ,people dropped out of the trials.

Ultimately, that vaccine didn't show conclusive protection, something some researchers attributed to the low doses. For a vaccine potent enough to provide true immunization, people would have suffered too much pain to make vaccination practical, said Hector, now a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco.

Scientists had to start looking for different vaccines.

Over the following decade, about $16 million was raised to find another vaccine.

But, progress has faltered because of the exorbitant costs of manufacturing and testing the experimental vaccine in today's much more rigorously controlled research environment.

Nearly all the money raised during the early excitement for a new vaccine has been spent and donations have dwindled, said Michael Cooper, president of the Valley Fever Americas Foundation, which raises funds for the vaccine project.

The start of the recession in 2008 also took a toll on funding. When the state was looking for ways to make up a massive budget deficit, it stopped funding the vaccine. However, in the wake of the Reporting on Health Collaborative's series, Assemblyman Michael Rubio said he intends to try to revive state funding for vaccine research.

The foundation has invested close to $1 million over the years for the Valley Fever Vaccine Project, but that's just a fraction of what the project needs.

The amount of money raised to date is not enough to move a vaccine forward quickly. For a vaccine to be brought to market would require, by some estimates, an additional $100 million in research funding. At the current rate, it would take more than 60 years to raise that much money.

That's the kind of money only the pharmaceutical industry can provide.

U.S. pharmaceutical companies are working on about 300 vaccines for diseases, including HIV, pancreatic cancer and a host of other conditions, including allergies to peanuts and cat hair.

But no U.S. pharmaceutical company is funding the development of a vaccine for valley fever, according to a 2012 report compiled by the trade association Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

Merck spokesman Robert Consalvo said it can take more than a decade to develop a viable vaccine. Simply fronting the cost and managing the logistics of enrolling hundreds, if not thousands, of patients for human studies can be a significant undertaking, Consalvo said.

To pay for that kind of investment, drug companies often look for vaccines that will have a market that will expand over time. The annual influenza vaccine, for instance, was initially marketed to parents with young children, older adults and people with compromised immune systems. But the market has grown to the point where everyone now is encouraged to get a flu shot, and they are offered in drug stores and grocery stores nationwide.

Valley fever, so far, does not have the promise of a larger market. With the vast majority of cases concentrated in California and Arizona, most of the country doesn't have to worry about the disease.

For a longer version of this story, and for more stories on valley fever, go to reportingonhealth.org/valleyfever. If you want to tell how valley fever has affected you, write valleyfever@reportingonhealth.org or call (661) 748-3142.